Penny Interaction

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From A to D and back again:The emerging aesthetics of Interactive Art

First published in Leonardo Electronic Almanac april 1996

and NextWave catalog, May 1996, Melbourne Australia

Interactive art represents a radical phase-shift in western esthetics. Artists are

confronting unexplored territory: the esthetics of machine mediated interactivity.

Designing the interactive experience adds an entire dimension to the esthetic endevour,

one without precedent in the visual and plastic arts. In the west, the visual arts have no

tradition of an esthetics of interactivity. Six hundred years of painting has resulted in a

rich esthetics of the still image, of color and line, shape and area, of representational

geometry and perspective. The effect of six hundred years of enculturation is that we

know how to read images (which observe the conventions of renaissance perspective)

before we can read text. One hundred years of moving image has given us a culturallyestablished set of cinematic conventions: we can read cinema. But as yet we have no

culturally established esthtetic of real time interaction.

The implications of this observation are resounding. Jonathan Crary cogently argues

that meaning in an artwork is constituted between the viewer and the work, that the

`techniques of the observer' are as important as the techniques of the artist. Artists are

struggling to establish a new canon, a new genre, but not only are understandings

about the dynamics of the interactive experience very limited among artists, but the

`techniques of the user' are non-existant. What results is a crisis of meaning: the work

cannot `mean' because the user doesn't speak the language.

What I hope to do here is lay out some tentative definitions and contingent

categorisations, and question some obfuscating notions, in order to stimulate closer,

more rigorous thought on the subject. In the past, some people have proposed to me

that a photo or a painting is interactive, I find that infuriating. So I'd like to define

ìnteractive' for the purpose of this discussion: An interactive system is a machine

system which reacts in the moment, by virtue of automated reasoning based on data

from its sensory apparatus. An Interactive Artwork is such a system which addresses

artistic issues. A painting is an instance of representation. A film is a sequence of

representations. Interactive artworks are not instances of representation, they are virtual

machines which themselves produces instances of representation based on real timeinputs.



There are two new esthetic tasks in interactive art. The first is to discover the nuances

and modalities of the interactive dynamic, and to find out how to apply these to esthetic

goals. The second is the integration of the esthetically manipulated interactive dynamic

with the other components of the work, be they physical objects, images or sounds, into

an integrated esthetic whole.

Interactivity implies real time, now. The difference between an interactive application

and handwritten correspondence is essentially one of time. There is a time frame which

is percieved by humans as `real-time' response, it is the time frame of physiological

reaction. Slower (or faster) than this is not `real time'. Switching a light switch produces

a real time response, but it is simplistic. Interactivity allows reactions by a machine in

real time which are intellectually and cognitively complex. This defines the medium. This

capability is made possible by high speed data processing.

Observation of altered of spatial and temporal relationships has been one of the staples

of new media theory for decades. These changing relationships are effecting critical

social and cultural changes, and it is to be expected that artists will get interested in

such changes.

Peter Callas observed some years ago that the televised spectacle was in the process

of taking on the functions historically assigned to the architectural monument. The

architectural monument is localised in space but persistent over time. The broadcast

media spectacle, on the other hand, is localised in time but spread wide over space. A

book is a medium in which time is collapsed (you read after I write) but space remains

stable (I cannot access the book unless I am sharing my physical space with the book).

Conversely, telematic works collapse space but `maintain' time. A book is like a

monument. A conventional artwork is like a monument. Interactive artworks may beinherently Warholian, they may have significance only for their "15 minutes of fame". On

the other hand some interactive artworks present themselves in the guise of static,

permanent `monumental' things (this may only be a transition phase).

The advent of artworks which combine electronic image (and sound) technologies,

sculptural utilisation of space and digitally coordinated automation of parts; often with

electromechanical elements and recourse to data from sensors or other user input

devices; presents us with a new esthetic complex, the conformations of which are only

marginally amenable to the techniques of traditional artistic analysis. Therefore it seems

necessary to attempt an evaluation of the esthetic modalities and formal qualities ofvarious types of interactive work, by reference to some well known examples.

Two preliminary distinctions must be made. In the first case I would like to distinguish

between systems which embrace the `top-down', serial processing single cpu model.

These works are usually built on or for desktop computers. Another genre of work,

inspired by robotics, complexity theory and artificial life models, utilises discrete or

networked multiple processors, and are usually installations or performances with



mobile components. This paper will concentrate on the former category (although my

own work concentrates on the latter)

A second distinction must be drawn within the `single cpu' category: between screenal

and spatial interactivity. The first extends the idea of the painting or the cinema/tv

screen, the second engages the kinesthetic aspects of embodiment, the sensibilites ofsculpture and dance. Hypertextual works offers through the screenal window a

navigable dataspace, a space which is experienced intellectually rather than physically:

Henry See's A Memory Project and Lynn Hershman's Deep Contact were early

examples of this paradigm which has become ubiquitous in what is now called

ìnteractive multimedia'.

Many interactive artworks explore the relationship between real space and virtual

space. One way to understand this phenomenon is to `see' it as a visualisation of the

relationship between the physical world and the imperceptible digital world. The entire

phenomenon of VR may be seen this way, as a metaphorisation of digital data'space'

into the visual. Certainly the conflation of digital communication with some kind of non-

existent `space' is a consistent trope from the `cyberspace' of Gibson's Neuromancer to

Lawnmowerman. Thankfully, VR's fifteen minutes of fame came and went. Now we look

back in wonder at all the utopian brouhaha that was generated around what basically

amounts to a viewing device. I note that many projects which are presented as `VR'

these days have dumped the HMD and are presented on monitors or projections

screens, they amount to navigable CAD projects.

Two of Jeffrey Shaw's works: Legible City and Virtual Museum, are paradigmatic of

works which map a virtual space onto a real space. In these works physical movement

in real space navigated the viewpoint through a superimposed virtual world.

In legible city, speed of travel through the virtual world was controlled by peadlling a

stationary bicycle. There was a one-to-one correspondance between the rate of

movement through the virtual world and the speed the bicycle would have been

travelling, were it mobile. In effect, the bicycle is a mouse. It is worth noting that the

interfaces to virtual worlds are seldom mapped one to one. Generally a small movement

in the real world produces a large movement in the virtual world. This tendency

replicates the paradigm of the labour saving machine. This paradigm is taken to the

absurd extreme in the `flying eye' type of VR interfaces in which the gaze seems to be

rocket-propelled. In Virtual Museum, simply leaning in your seat provided the motionthrough the virtual world.



In Legible City, the bicycle analogy allows for the dissociation between steering and

linear travel. This dissociation of rotational and linear modes is carried to extreme in

EVE, (Experimental Virtual Environment, Jeffrey Shaw et al). In EVE the three degrees

of rotational movement are mapped directly from the movement of the head, ie, I turn

ninety degrees to the right, the image also moves ninety degrees to the right. But the

three degrees of linear movement are abstracted, mapped through the use of a joystick.

Another type of relation between virtual space and real space is the `paradoxical map',

in which the virtual space replicates and is aligned point for point with the real space,

except for certain digital phenomena. Gideon May's `Table with the Spirits'(1993) is one

of several examples of this type. In most HMD (Head Mounted Display) type VR

projects, Virtual Space and Real Space are totally separated.

David Rokeby's Very Nervous System presents us with a paradigm of non-visual

interactivity in which human physical movement illicits responses (in this case sound) in

a more or less marvellous way (in this case video image interpretation). There is no

metaphor of travel here, you are (only) where you are. Yet a kind of invisible `virtual

world' is mapped over the real world. Interaction with that virtual world produces sound.

In some circles this instrumenting of an architectural space is referred to as ùbiquitous

computing', and is discussed as the inverse of VR.

Screen-based `hypertextual works', ìnstrumented physical spaces' and `mapped virtual

and real environments' are three new genres. Another `dimension' can be added to

each of these by the inclusion of fast, wide bandwidth digital comunications

technologies. We might call this tele-interactivity. There are identifiable sub-genres in

which the interaction is: between people geographically separated; between a person

and a machine, geographically separated; or between people geographically separatedat a virtual site.

The first we might call `teleconferencing art'. Paul Sermon has produced provocative

works in this vein, such as Telematic Dreaming. In this work, a video camera sends the

image of Paul, one a bed, to another site at which it is projected onto a bed. At the

second site, a guest is invited onto the bed. Paul can see the remote site by a returned

video image. Pauls image interacts with the guest on the bed. The piece also includes

two way audio contact. Through its direct eroticism pieces generates a host of questions

about prescence.

A second sub-genre utilises the idea of teleoperation. Eduardo Kac and Ed Bennett's

Ornithorinco allows a user to teleoperate a robot (over phone lines) to explore an

enviroment. More provocatively, Stelarc's recent Fractal Flesh project allows his body to

be teleoperated over the net. In both these works some aspect of the user (vision,

volition) is extruded over the communication network to `be' in another place. A third

sub-genre (exemplified by Agnes Hegedus' Fruit Machine) allows multiple remote users

to cooperate in tasks in a shared virtual environment.



The sudden explosion of networked multimedia (via the World Wide Web) has finally

realised the dreams of the pioneer network artist of the mid eigthies, (though this

realisation has a decidedly commercial cast to it). A recent network project by the Berlin

based Art+Com group, T-Vision is on one hand chillingly panoptical, but on the other it

demonstates coordinated global data retrieval in a way that the WWW only hints at. T-

Vision offers a radical new paradigm of computation. In this work, a user rolls a beach-ball sized trackball, and a globe of the world presented on the screen, rolls

correspondingly. This image is made up of a patchwork of satellite and aerial photos.

This world can be zoomed. In some cases one can zoom from the entire globe down to

a city street in one smooth swoop. In one case, one can zoom into the Art+Com office,

and look through a video camera pointing out the window, and see real time video

action! T-Vision can utilise the entire internet, drawing on dispersed databases for its

images, so that the globe is continually updated, even to the extent of real time video, if

available.

As cinema emerged as a technology and an esthetic, it also built its institution itscultural niche. Cinema did not find its home in the museum. It built another institution,

where the notion of the òriginal' was absurd. (No one asks if the particular print of the

film you're watching is an òriginal or a copy'.) In the same way, interactive art will forge

its own cultural niche. Is the web the environment where Interactive art will settle? Only

time will tell.

Simon Penny. Pittsburgh PA 1996

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Penny Interaction